A Meteor Day Carol
by Mengde
Summary: Vincent Valentine has no use for Meteor Day. He thinks of it as a frivolous and stupid holiday which people use to shelter themselves from the harsh realities of life. However, he finds his beliefs challenged when the ghost of an old foe visits him...
1. Stave One: Hojo's Ghost

Hello and Merry Christmas, everyone. It's Mengde again. In the spirit of the holidays, I've decided to do a spin on the classic, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Of course, I don't think Gaea has Christmas per se, so I invented Meteor Day (when the Planet repelled Meteor) and Victory Day (when Cloud defeated Sephiroth - it happens to fall only a week or so after Meteor Day, just because). Therefore, this piece doesn't look at the spirit of Christmas per se, but rather the spirit of all holidays that unify friends and family. It also looks deeply at Vincent and what could be, so if you like Vincent you should be at home here.

Just like the original story, I'm writing this in five staves, or chapters. Today, the 25th, is Stave One: Hojo's Ghost. The second through fifth staves will be put up on the 26th-30th, so if you enjoy this first chapter, please look forward to the rest of them! Without further ado...

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**A Meteor Day Carol**

**A Final Fantasy VII Fan Fiction**

**Written by Mengde

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Stave One: Hojo's Ghost**

Hojo was dead, to begin with. Vincent Valentine, as he had dueled the man atop the Sister Ray, had shot him many times. If there had been anything left of the scientist after that, it had been a mere whisper, a shadow, a fragment of memories that could not so much die as cease to exist. Thus, it is safe to say that Hojo was dead.

The man had had no funeral. Nor, if there had indeed been a funeral, would any mourners have turned up. In life Hojo had been a thoroughly unpleasant, domineering, egotistical, heartless, power-mongering, horrible person, and nobody had ever offered him their hand in friendship because everybody had always kept him at more than arm's length.

The reason Hojo's state of death need be established is simple – were any doubt left in one's mind as to the man's being dead, the events to follow would not seem nearly as strange and wonderful as they truly were. Therefore it shall be stated again: Hojo, on the eve of what was to be called Meteor Day and celebrated worldwide as the happiest of holidays, had died a horrible and painful death.

Seven years hence, Vincent stared at several beakers full of glowing mako energy in a laboratory. In a twisted sort of irony, it had been Hojo's work that Vincent had begun to build upon in a quest to remove the alterations from his body. It was also in Hojo's old laboratory in the Shin-Ra building that Vincent performed his endless experiments, for the WRO would not lease him a suitable facility of their own. He was assisted by Shelke Rui, whose unique talents made her an excellent assistant. Hojo's name was still on the door, slowly rusting away. Vincent refused to expend the effort or time to take it down.

The clock neared seven and the laboratory was bitterly cold. Vincent did not bother restoring anything in the lab beyond the most basic state of repair necessary to keep it functioning, and many windows remained shattered and open to the freezing winds roaring past the building at the sixty-seventh floor's extreme altitude. Shelke moved across the room from her station to the small heater in a corner of the room, which was beginning to run out of power.

"Leave it," Vincent said brusquely to her. He was busily writing notes into a lab book, calculating the required amounts of materials for future experiments. "No need to drain from the main power supply."

Shelke said nothing. She instead moved back away from the heater. At her station, she tried to warm her fingers over the flame of a small burner, which was not a very plentiful source of heat.

"You'll want tomorrow off, I suppose," Vincent observed. "It being Meteor Day."

Shelke looked up at him. "If it is convenient, Vincent Valentine," she said.

"No, it's not," Vincent replied. "If I insist you come in here tomorrow and keep monitoring your experiments, you'll think I'm being unreasonable." Shelke did not contest this, so he went on, "But you don't think it's unreasonable when I have to show up and cover all your work for you so we don't lose crucial data."

"Vincent, you know the rate we are going at precludes data being lost in the course of a single day."

Vincent returned his gaze to his lab book and grunted. "Feh."

There was a knock at the door. The two of them exchanged puzzled glances, as they rarely got any visitors, but their confusion was resolved as the door opened to reveal Cloud Strife, dressed warmly and looking, for once, quite happy.

"Happy Meteor Day!" he said.

Vincent gave him a cool glance. "You know how I feel about Meteor Day, Cloud."

"I thought this was Vincent's lab," Cloud said with a twinkle in his glowing eyes, "but I see Hojo's name still on the door! Would you be Vincent or Hojo, then?"

Shelke giggled, an affectation she had been practicing for many years as part of her reintegration into society, but she quickly halted when Vincent looked over his shoulder at her, his red eyes glittering. "Meteor Day," he said, ignoring Cloud's joke. "It's a stupid holiday made up by stupid people."

Cloud made a dissenting sound. "Come on, Vincent; stop being such a stick in the mud! We want to see you at Seventh Heaven tomorrow for dinner. And what's so wrong with Meteor Day?"

"You were there," Vincent said. "It was the end of the world. Civilization had fallen apart at the seams. So what if Meteor was gone – we were left in Hell. People are just trying to forget the horror by covering it up with bright lights and garish paper."

"You say that like it's a bad thing, Vincent."

"Meteor Day is a fragile shell constructed around a core of bad memories. The only thing it's good for is burying the past by celebrating it and making it something it's not. 'Happy Meteor Day' is a ridiculous idea. I prefer thinking about the future. Isn't that the reason you married Tifa?"

"I married Tifa because I love her," Cloud countered.

Vincent grunted again. "Feh."

"At any rate, you're still invited to dinner," Cloud said. "I know Shelke is coming."

"Goodbye, Cloud," Vincent said.

"And even though you don't want to celebrate it, I like this holiday, so I'll tell you again – Happy Meteor Day!"

"Goodbye, Cloud."

"Oh – and a Festive Victory Day!"

"_Goodbye, Cloud!"_

Cloud ducked out and closed the door behind him. Shelke looked at Vincent. "It's seven o'clock."

Vincent gave no indication that he had heard her for a long minute. He made one final mark in his lab book before giving a sigh and closing the manuscript. "Take tomorrow off, Shelke."

"Thank you, Vincent Valentine."

"But get here extra-early the day after to catch up on recording your data!" Vincent called after her as she left the lab.

Packing his meager possessions did not take him long. After he closed down the lab for the evening, he took the only working elevator all the way down to the first floor of the decrepit and dilapidated Shin-Ra Building. As the city of Edge had grown, it had begun to expand back into its parent Midgar. It was to the point where all Vincent had to do to get to his place of unending labor was simply walk a half-mile to Edge's city limits, six blocks out past that, turn a corner, and he was there, confronted with the massive edifice of Shin-Ra's fallen power.

Therefore, Vincent turned the corner in question, walked six blocks back into Edge, and traversed another half-mile to his place of residence. Winter had fallen heavily upon the Eastern Continent this year, and his pale countenance and sleek black hair were quickly dotted with fine flecks of snow. By the time he returned to his domicile, a small apartment in an old building, it was dark, the sun having finally set.

Mounted upon the door to the building was a large, dull knocker, unornamented and unremarkable in every facet. Vincent walked to the door, retrieving his key from within the folds of his cloak, and before his eyes the knocker shimmered and transfigured itself into the ghostly face of Hojo.

The apparition was a pale grey, lit from within by some eerie source of illumination defying classification. In every detail, the horrid physiognomy before him matched the one he remembered as belonging to Hojo when the man lived. Sunken eyes stared out from the lines of an angry face, and rounded spectacles perched high on a sharp nose. Even as Vincent stared at this strange phenomenon, it vanished and became an ordinary knocker once again.

Telling himself that this was merely a trick of the light – an idea he hardly believed but forced himself to accept – Vincent unlocked the door to the building. He quickly got into his apartment and, contrary to his normal routine, secured the door behind him. A brief check of the rooms confirmed the apartment was empty except for him, so he prepared himself a little food before changing into a simple robe and going to bed.

He would ordinarily sleep for a solid eight hours, rising at four in the morning so he could be in the laboratory by five. However, it was difficult tonight to find any sleep, and Vincent lay awake for at least an hour.

The idea abruptly got into his head that he was not alone; opening his eyes made clear that a spectral glow filled the bedroom. He threw aside the bed curtains with a swift and violent motion.

No sooner had he done this than was Vincent looking, aghast, into the phantasmagoric, shifting face of Hojo. The apparition appeared much as it had in life, dressed in a white lab coat, a sneer plastered on its unsightly features. A notable addition was a massive, iron chain wrapped around its waist. The chain trailed along the floor behind the spirit off into other rooms of Vincent's apartment, so long it was, and it was festooned with lab books, scalpels, syringes, glowing vials of mako, restraints, and similar paraphernalia of experimentation and torture. Vincent thought he could even make out, in the foyer behind Hojo – through him, actually, as the ghost was transparent – an entire surgical table, secured to a single link of the chain.

Vincent had seen his share of terrible things, but never had anything so unnerved him. "What… who are you?" he demanded.

"Ask me," the ghost said, "who I was."

"Well, who were you, then?"

"In life, I was your mortal enemy, Hojo."

"Why are you here now?" Vincent demanded. "What do you want?"

"From you? Much," replied the ghost. "But it doesn't appear as though you believe in me."

"Of course not," Vincent said. "You're dead. I'm probably hallucinating. One of the demons you put in my head – or, Hojo put in my head, since he's dead and you're not real – is playing a trick on me."

"Think that if you will," the ghost sighed. "It's not as though I'm here by choice, and it's not as though you can change my being here. If you choose not to believe in me, it won't change anything."

Vincent's eyes drifted to the chain. "Why are you carrying that chain?" he asked.

"I forged it in life, with my insatiable curiosity coupled with my lack of regard for the lives of other beings," the ghost replied. "I made it link by link, and I'm doomed to wander the world, kept down by its weight, unable to move on." He leered at Vincent. "Your chain is not as long as this one yet, but if you continue as you are, it certainly will be soon."

Vincent's gaze darted around himself. He half-expected to see a spectral chain secured to him, but he saw nothing of the like. "What? Why?"

"You are more like me than you might like to imagine, Vincent. You move through the world with your eyes fixed on tomorrow, never looking at the present, just as I did, and the swath of misery you leave in your wake is testament to that. But I, as part of my penance, have been instructed to tell you this – you have a chance, Vincent, to turn yourself around, and uncreate the weighty chain you've made yourself."

Several thoughts darted through Vincent's head, suggesting various courses of action he might take. He finally settled on hearing the ghost out so as to get it out of his room sooner rather than later. "Go on."

"You will be visited, Vincent, by three spirits," the ghost said.

Vincent made an unpleasant face. "I don't need any more spectral beings visiting me," he said. "You've already bothered me enough, and I have three other beings from beyond the pale taking up residence in my skull!"

"Hear me, Vincent!" the ghost thundered. "My time grows short. The first spirit will visit you tonight, as the clock strikes one. The second will arrive tomorrow, at the same time, and the third will arrive the day after, at midnight. Remember what I have told you, and expect them!"

The apparition dragged himself to the window, which opened seemingly of its own accord at his approach. "This is your only chance, Vincent! Heed the words of the spirits, or you will join me in endlessly wandering the world, fettered in iron, wishing to repent your sins but deprived of all power to do so!"

He hurled himself out of the window, his incredibly long chain snaking out after him. The surgical table faded into smoke as it hit the frame, and the window slammed itself closed.

Vincent slowly got to his feet. He checked the window, which was just as secure as when he had entered the room. In fact, there was a thin layer of dust upon the sill, as though it had not been opened in some time. He went downstairs. The door there was also secured, as he had left it. Perplexed and troubled by the whole experience, Vincent decided to go straight to bed. He collapsed against the pillow, determined to forget what he had decided was merely an unpleasant figment of an overactive imagination. A moment later, he was asleep.


	2. Stave Two: First of the Three Spirits

**Stave Two: The First of the Three Spirits**

When Vincent woke, it was pitch black. Only his uncanny ability to see in total darkness enabled him to perceive anything, and all he could see was his bed and its curtains, neither of which were very informative as to the time. Desiring to know how close it was to the hour Hojo had specified, Vincent pulled aside a bit of the curtain in front of his face, revealing the clock set on his nightstand. Its hour hand hovered near one, and its minute hand, at the moment keeping nine company, was making its inexorable progress toward twelve.

He watched the minute hand slowly move, never blinking or moving, barely breathing. As soon as the hand reached twelve and its smaller compatriot reached one, Vincent looked around. Nothing changed, there was no ghost come to haunt him, and he immediately felt immensely better about the entire situation. If he had been any other man, he might have even laughed at the idea of ever expecting a preternatural visitation.

Not a moment after he relaxed, all the lights came on in the room. His curtains were drawn aside, to his great surprise – and that surprise only increased when he saw the curtains had been drawn aside by a hand. Looking at that hand and moving his gaze up the arm to which the hand was attached eventually led to him gazing upon a very familiar visage.

The figure appeared in all physical attributes – those of the tone and texture of its skin, the color and shape of its eyes, the shade and length of its hair, and so forth – identical to the late Maiden of the Planet, Aerith, as Vincent had known her in life. A great beacon of light shone forth from the crown of its head, illuminating the whole room and nearly blinding Vincent. It was clothed in a dress of pure white lace which rippled and danced on an invisible wind, secured at its waist by a broad cloth belt decorated with a wondrously beautiful motif of flowers. It held in one hand a pink ribbon, and in the other a folded-up funeral shroud. Despite its appearance, Vincent could not help sensing something wrong with it – not wrong in the sense of evil or malfeasance, but the sort of wrongness an edgeless knife or a lightless lamp has. The spirit had the appearance of Aerith but not the substance of Aerith; nothing in it was female, and nothing of it was alive the way she had once been.

Vincent threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the blinding light the spirit emanated. "Are you," he asked, almost afraid to know the answer, "the first spirit that Hojo told me would visit?"

"I am," the Ghost said. Its voice seemed to come from far away, though it stood but a few feet from Vincent.

"Who are you? Are you who you appear to be?"

"I am the Ghost of Days Past," the spirit replied, "and this is a form familiar to you and fitting for my purpose. The woman I resemble is a powerful symbol of the past – its capability to inspire both joy and sorrow, the hold it has on all of us even as we look to the present and toward the future. Like the past, she will always be with you, even if she is not here."

"I see," Vincent said, his heart pounding in his chest despite his best efforts to remain calm. "Days Past, you said? Which days?"

"Your days. Your past, Vincent."

"I'm sorry, but… your light is hurting my eyes. Could you dim it or cover it up somehow?"

"That is the purpose of the shroud I carry," the Ghost said. "Would you have me let it settle over me again and douse my light, when it was your days on this world that created it in the first place? Do you wish to see me gone that badly?"

"No," Vincent said. "I suppose not." He paused. "…What is your purpose here?"

"Your welfare!"

"I think a good night's sleep would contribute more to my welfare than you."

"Such harsh words!" the Ghost clucked at him. "I can help you in many ways beyond the scope of your imagination, Vincent. And besides, you have slept for many years already! One night will not undo you." It seemed to consider something. "Your reclamation, then, if not your welfare. But come – my time here is limited." It extended its hand to Vincent. In the same instant, the window again opened itself of its own accord.

Vincent looked from the spirit's proffered hand to the window and back again. "Spirit, I can't fly."

"Take my hand," it said to him, "and you will not need to."

Hesitating for only another moment, Vincent reached out and the took the spirit's hand. The two of them were instantly transported outside, through the window, but in a most peculiar fashion. It was as though the room fell away from them, or traveled away into the far distance, as though the planet itself moved and they alone were still and unaffected by its passage – for Vincent felt no forces of momentum or inertia working upon his body, yet he and the Ghost took to the sky and flew.

They soared through the sky, or perhaps the sky soared past them, at a tremendous speed, and just as abruptly as their journey had begun, it ended. Vincent found himself standing in fresh, white snow, the spirit floating a few inches off of the ground beside him. Around them were many leafless trees that stretched their bare branches towards the sky, which was sunny and clear despite the snow on the ground.

Vincent looked around, recognition sounding in his mind. "I know this place!" he said. "The Academy! I was a boy here!"

"Do you remember the way, then?" the Ghost asked.

"I could walk through it without looking," Vincent replied.

They moved for some time amongst the trees, until they came to a road. Moving down it was a procession of some dozen cars, all of very old make, many of them bearing the logo of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company. Each car was occupied by an older man seated behind the wheel and three to six young boys. All of the boys looked invariably excited and energetic, and all of the drivers also seemed to be, if not markedly jolly, at least somewhat jocund.

"Going home for Blessingsday," Vincent said, watching the drivers carefully navigate their vehicles along the snowy road. "They don't see us, do they?"

"They are shadows," the Ghost explained, "of things that once were. They have no consciousness of us."

Vincent observed the travelers' progress, and his inscrutable expression belied the turmoil within him. He watched the cars take different forks in the road, watched the young men roll down windows and wish one another Happy Blessingsday. The Ghost also watched them go. "They are all going home for the holiday," it said. "But there is one boy who was left behind."

"I know," Vincent said. And he felt a stony knot of pain in his heart, a hurt to which he had thought himself long since inured.

They followed the road up to the Academy, walking through its iron-wrought gates as though they did not exist. The school was housed within a tall, dark mansion which had had several of its wings expanded into dormitories and most of its rooms converted into classrooms. Vincent and the Ghost walked through the front door of the mansion, followed its twisting hallways and staircases, and arrived in a corner of one of the dormitories. The room was small, bare save a table and two chairs set near a hearth in which a small fire crackled. Sitting in one of the chairs was a thin, black-haired, ruby-eyed boy absorbed in a book, an old tome which told of far-off lands and the heroes inhabiting them.

Vincent sat in the chair opposite his younger self and watched him. Not a sound could be heard except the crackling of the fire and the occasional turning of a page by the boy, and Vincent slowly felt a lump form in his throat at the sight of his young, forgotten self and how piteous he was.

Time passed, and the boy grew, and the books he read changed three or four times. "Left here each time," the Ghost sighed.

"My father didn't want to see me," Vincent said hoarsely. "Not after… not after my mother died."

After some span of time, the boy was joined by an older gentleman, a man Vincent recognized as one of the family's servants, and then the two disappeared from the room, leaving it cold and empty, bereft of even a fire in its hearth.

"Father had a change of heart, one Blessingsday, and summoned me home," Vincent reminisced. "We had a… disagreement. Only a year afterward, I joined the Turks."

"Let us see another Blessingsday," the Ghost said.

The mansion faded away to nothing. Vincent and the Ghost stood in a large, elaborately decorated room. Streamers and brightly colored ribbons hung from the ceiling, balloons were scattered liberally throughout the room, and an entire table was heaped with garishly colored party favors. Several other tables bore dozens of plates of food. A multitude of people milled throughout the space, eating, talking with one another, or dancing to the music being played by a live band in one corner.

"The Shin-Ra Blessingsday party," Vincent said.

"A fine way to celebrate the holiday," the Ghost observed, "as it is traditional for family and friends to gather together and explore why they are fortunate and decide for which things they are thankful."

Vincent made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded more than a little derisive. "I never understood any of it." He stiffened as his past self walked right past him. The younger Vincent had sleekly styled hair and wore a neat, well-pressed suit, as well as a tight, toothy grin that would doubtless be at home on the face of a shark.

"How different you were," the Ghost said.

"Blessingsday," Vincent sighed. "I never had anything to be thankful for. Everything I had, I earned or struggled to get. I wasn't about to be thankful for my job that I'd literally killed people to get. I had no intention of being thankful for the women I picked up at these parties – there were always other women and other parties." The younger Vincent steered his special friend expertly through the crowd in the direction of the door. "It's just a hollow façade that people throw up so they can convince themselves they have everything they want when they're really greedy and won't ever be satisfied."

"Do you truly think so poorly of humanity?" the Ghost asked.

Vincent turned to look at the spirit, but as he did so the room melted away around them. A snowy ridge overlooking Edge City replaced it, and Vincent felt a terrible, poignant sense of familiarity overtake him – the kind experienced at the moment one realizes one is in a particularly awful recurring nightmare. "Not here," he said to the Ghost. "Why would you bring me here?"

Sitting on the ridge overlooking Edge was Vincent, as he had been only a few years ago. He wore his red cloak and his brass gauntlet, and though he looked hardly different in body than he had at the party so many years ago, his eyes spoke of a long and difficult life that had not been kind to him. At his side sat a young woman, slender in form, with short black hair, gentle brown eyes, and graceful features marking her as a child of the far West. She wore a thick coat to keep out the cold, and she looked patiently up at her companion for the day as she spoke to him.

"I don't think we should see one another any more, Vince."

Vincent said nothing. She took this as an invitation to continue. "When we got together, after that mess with Deepground, you seemed like you were happy. But now you're going crazy trying to figure out what Hojo did to you. It's the only thing that matters to you anymore, and I can't help you with it."

"I want to know, of course," Vincent replied. "But I don't see why you feel you need to leave. Pursuing this end of mine and being with you aren't mutually exclusive."

"But they _are, _Vince, even if you don't want to admit it," the young woman said. "Reeve said he would help, but you didn't believe him. Everybody in AVALANCHE wants to help, too, but you say they can't. You don't believe in people, Vince, that's your problem. You feel like you can only depend on yourself, and letting anybody else help you just drives you crazy."

The young woman got up and dusted the snow off of herself. "It's okay. I understand, even if I don't like it. That's why I'm going to let you go – because I know you sure won't do it yourself, and because I care about you." She stooped and gave Vincent one last kiss, a gentle one on his forehead. "See you around."

She left, and they parted.

Vincent's past self sat mutely in the snow, watching the young woman make her way back down to Edge, and Vincent himself felt his eyes beginning to sting in the cold. "Go after her," he whispered hoarsely at himself. His past self did no such thing, but rather continued to sit like a cold lump in the snow, hard and emotionless. Vincent whirled to confront the spirit. "Don't show me any more!" he hissed. "I won't see it!"

"I am only showing you what happened," the Ghost said.

"No more!" Between the whiteness of the snow, the sun in the sky, and Vincent's own agitated state, the corona of light emanating from the crown of the spirit's skull suddenly seemed blindingly bright. Some bizarre process churning within his head connected the light with the Ghost's ability to lance his heart with cruel barbs from his past, and he rushed forward, intent on putting it out once and for all. He seized the funeral shroud from the Ghost, let it unfurl, and threw it over the spirit's head.

The Ghost seemed to collapse beneath the shroud, as though the fine cloth were made of lead, but the light continued to pour forth from beneath the shroud's edges. Vincent stomped sharply down on the white cloth, trying desperately to compress the spirit down to nothing, but the light kept shining, brighter and brighter.

Vincent became aware, though the light made it impossible to see, of two things. He was bone tired, beyond the point of mundane exhaustion, and he was in his bedroom. Almost unaware of his actions, he stumbled away from the light and fell into his bed. Immediately, he was asleep.


	3. Stave Three: Second of the Three Spirits

Hello again everyone, just a quick update here. Remember that schedule I mentioned in the first chapter? I lied. Got a little distracted with other stuff and couldn't get this written until yesterday, so I'm going to put up Stave Four on the 29th and Stave Five on the 1st of January, 2009, as a Happy New Year present to everyone. That is all!

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**Stave Three: The Second of the Three Spirits**

Vincent woke in the middle of a shadowy dream filled with vague figures and images he could not comprehend. He opened his eyes and was not entirely surprised to find it was still pitch black and close to the hour of one in the morning. He had no recollection of sleeping for an entire day, but he could hardly question the credulity of such a thing when spirits were paying him visits in his bedroom.

He drew all his bed curtains open, thinking he would meet the next spirit without fear or reservations. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing to do at this point except move forward and let the ghosts tell him whatever they had come to say. Therefore he sat erect in his bed, waiting for the second spirit to make its appearance.

As the clock drew closer to one, Vincent grew tenser and tenser until he felt his heart pounding in his chest. Whatever ideas he had entertained about meeting the next spirit without fear, his subconscious certainly did not share them. He vividly remembered being forced to watch his abandonment by the only woman after Lucrecia to mean anything to him.

The clock reached one, and Vincent stiffened in spite of himself. However, no spirit made its appearance, the room was not bathed in light, and for a moment he entertained the hope, however futile, that the whole experience had really been a demonically induced hallucination.

Unfortunately for him, that pleasant hope evaporated the instant he saw light coming from beneath the door to his bedroom. With absolute certainty, he knew he had not left on any of the lights in the house. The only explanation for this illumination was that it came from an otherworldly source.

Not knowing what to expect, Vincent crossed the room to the door. When he stood before it with one hand on its handle, he heard a pleasant voice call for him, by name, to enter.

Vincent steeled himself and opened the door. The sight that greeted him was incredible – it was his room into which he stepped, but it was changed so radically it was almost impossible to recognize as his. Dozens and dozens of colored, blinking lights were strung throughout the room, and large advertisements were plastered willy-nilly across every surface, including the floor; the surfaces themselves had been plated or otherwise covered in brilliant, lustrous gold, garish music boomed from an unseen source, and in the center of the room, forming a makeshift throne, was an enormous pile of prizes such as nobody had ever seen. Stuffed animals, balloons, huge balled-up collections of cotton candy, enormous rolls of tickets, toys of every variety, and even wads of cash – all this and more was shoved together into a truly gigantic mountain of material things.

Reclining easily upon the mountain was a large, white, stuffed Moogle. It had a plump, furry body and a relatively tiny pair of purple bat wings sprouting from its shoulder blades. Seated on top of the Moogle was what looked like a Cait Sith, holding a megaphone and looking down at Vincent.

"Come in, and know me better!" it said through its megaphone.

Vincent closed the door behind him and looked up incredulously at the robot. "Cait Sith?" he asked.

"Not in the least," it said. "I am the second spirit whose visit was foretold to you. I am the Ghost of Days Present. This form, which is familiar to you, suits my nature – a creature of the present, with neither true memories of the past nor real aspirations for the future. A creature which may, at any moment, be cast aside for another of its kind, identical in almost every way. I wonder – have you seen any of my brothers?"

"Brothers? I don't think I have."

"I have many thousands of them," the Ghost mused. "Well. Such is the way of things." The spirit's eyes glittered in a way that was entirely unlike the automaton Vincent knew – there was a powerful intellect there behind the feline features, an intellect which was conspicuously absent whenever Vincent addressed an actual Cait Sith.

"Spirit," Vincent said, "take me where you want. I'm beyond trying to fight at this point. Show me what you want to show me and I'll try to understand why."

"In that case, take hold of the Moogle's hand!"

The room around them vanished as soon as Vincent obeyed the Ghost's order. They stood outside in Edge City on Meteor Day. It was a bitterly cold morning and snow fell freely from the sky. The city, as it always did, smelled of rust, especially with the moisture of the flurries, and the only color anywhere besides the white of the snow was the grey of the steel and the iron out of which Edge was wrought. Still, despite all this, people walked the streets with smiles on their faces, wishing one another Happy Meteor Day.

The Ghost and Vincent walked among the crowds unnoticed. Vincent understood instinctively that these people were, just as the people shown to him by the Ghost of Days Past had been, mere shadows and not conscious of his presence. He and the Ghost moved through the market where people were busily shopping for dinner. Occasionally the Spirit would produce a fortune slip, as the first Cait Sith Vincent had known was wont to do, and cast it towards a particular person or family. The slip would lose cohesion and transform into a million shimmering points of light, which bathed the subject or subjects in brilliance for a moment before fading.

"What are you doing with the fortunes?" Vincent asked.

"It is the boon I bestow," the Ghost replied.

"How do you decide who to give the boon to?"

"I give it to the people who need it the most – people who need to be reminded of the spirit of the holidays, people who have the least to celebrate and therefore celebrate greatly indeed what little they have."

They continued on into the suburbs of Edge, and Vincent quickly recognized the road they took. He reminded himself he had to see this through to whatever end, and steeled himself as they approached Seventh Heaven.

Walking through the doors to the bar, Vincent was immediately greeted by a barrage of noise. All of AVALANCHE seemed to have turned up. Cid and Barret argued heatedly over drinks at the bar; Tifa washed glasses behind it and talked over them to Cloud, who helped her; Red XIII, Reeve, and Shelke sat together at a table and discussed the finer points of the mechanics of the WRO; Yuffie told Marlene and Denzel a story that was probably not appropriate but excited them enough that Tifa let it slide. Smells of something cooking wafted through the air from the kitchen behind the bar. The entire scene was one of contentment and delight.

"They seem to be enjoying themselves," the Ghost observed.

"Yes they do," Vincent said, his tone neutral. He had not ever attended a Meteor Day celebration – the holiday had been formally recognized the year after the Deepground incident, by which time Vincent had been hard at work trying to return his body to normal.

"Look, you stupid asshole, the fact is the WRO's gettin' its fingers in every little financial nook 'n cranny!" Cid said heatedly. "Sure, yer all for givin' em a cut of yer oil take 'cause they let you drill on their land, but who's to say whose land that is, eh?"

"Shit if I know, old man," Barret countered. "They say it's theirs, an' who'm I to say it ain't? I already got plenty for me 'n Marlene to live off of. I don't need the money I'm lettin' 'em have, an' I don't care if they _are _puttin' their fingers everywhere. It ain't my business."

"So you see, the XO is responsible for granting or withholding materiel through normal requisitions channels, but their approvals _and _their denials have to go through the head office for confirmation," Reeve explained to Red XIII. "Now, this creates an interesting interdepartmental self-regulating system, because the head office knows what sort of requests are being made and can't be cut out of the loop no matter what. The XO still has the final say on whether the material goes out, because the confirmation is just a formality, but without that confirmation nothing can happen."

"But I assume power defaults to the head office in case of emergencies or especially unusual requests," Red XIII said.

"Sort of. There's a system in place…" Reeve kept explaining, more than happy to explain the labyrinthine machinations of the government he had helped construct, while Shelke listened placidly. Looking more closely at her in the well-lit Seventh Heaven, Vincent noticed her skin was very pale, her eyes seemed glazed, and her frame, normally hidden by a lab coat in his presence, was thinner than he remembered. When she raised a glass to her lips to take a drink, the hand she used to grasp the glass trembled.

"Spirit," Vincent said. "Shelke… is she all right?"

The Ghost looked at the young woman trapped in a twelve-year-old's body. "Her health is fragile," it said. "She is devoted to finding out what keeps the two of you standing still in the flow of time, but she pushes herself beyond her limit."

Vincent swallowed. "Is she going to last?"

For a moment, the spirit closed its eyes. "I see an empty chair at this table next Meteor Day," he said. "Unless the shadows here are altered by the Future, she will exhaust herself and die, all while searching for a way to live her life properly."

"I…" Vincent trailed off, unsure what to say. The sound of his name being mentioned made him start and look for who had uttered it.

"You did?" Tifa asked. "I wouldn't go all the way up to his lab unless it was a real emergency. It's always too cold in there." She cast a disapproving glance in Shelke's direction, obviously not irritated with the girl but instead with the man who favored keeping the power reserves at maximum over being warm and comfortable.

"I'm sorry for him, I have to say," Cloud replied. "Keeping himself up there searching for an answer that might not even exist. You know what he told me? He thought Meteor Day was made by idiots so we can forget what the day was really like."

Curious, Vincent moved in closer to hear the conversation better. "Really?" Tifa sighed. "I could never imagine Vincent actually celebrating anything, but still. Knowing he thinks that just makes me sad."

Cloud shrugged. "I'm sure he doesn't know I'm the one who came up with the idea three years ago, Tifa. And while I don't understand his views, he's never actually asked anybody what Meteor Day is about. Nobody's ever told him it's about celebrating our survival, and isn't about trying to cover up what really happened."

Vincent felt his face grow hot, something that had not happened in years. Beside him, the Ghost harrumphed, a sound decidedly unlike those Cait Sith made. "What ails you, Vincent, and makes you blush so? After all, it is merely a stupid holiday made up by stupid people."

A white-hot burst of anger rushed through Vincent. He whirled to confront the Ghost and they suddenly stood outside in the street again, Seventh Heaven vanishing around them in the blink of an eye. "Look around you!" the Ghost continued, not taking any notice of Vincent's angry expression. People walked by and even through the two of them, all wearing happy smiles on their faces and cordially greeting others they passed in the street. "If you have any humanity left in your heart, and not only cold flint, forbear such harsh pronouncements until you see the architects of the holiday, and the people who celebrate it, and why!"

The world grew dark and cold around them. Vincent stiffened as he felt something take hold of his robe. He looked down and saw two children, a boy and a girl, clutching at the edges of his garment. They were horribly emaciated and obviously malnourished. A feral light gleamed in their eyes, and their small bodies seemed twisted and bent, as though some unnatural force was working upon their very bones.

"Who are these children?" Vincent asked, revulsion rising from deep within him. "Are they yours?"

"They are humanity's, but they cling especially tightly to you, Vincent Valentine," the Ghost said. "The boy is Ignorance and the girl is Want. Fear and shun them both, Vincent, but fear especially the boy. On his brow is the mark of doom, and to those who embrace him he gives that mark."

Looking at the boy, Vincent felt sick at the very thought of embracing such a twisted creature; he knew, however, deep in his heart, that he had done so already, and willingly. He returned his gaze to the spirit, but as he did so a clock sounded in the distance, ringing its mournful bell and announcing the hour of twelve.

The Ghost vanished, as did the awful children. A chill wind blew down the street, one that even Vincent felt. Motivated by a horrible feeling that crawled up his spine, he turned.

Gliding across the ground was a dark shape, a swirling mass of blackness that made the midnight sky look bright and cheerful by comparison. It made straight for him, and out of its depths stared two baleful green eyes.


	4. Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits

**Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits**

The Phantom stopped to hover in front of Vincent. Within the swirling black mass of its form were only two things recognizable as human, or at least humanoid: a single, black-gloved hand extending from the Ghost's side, and near the top, a pair of terrible green eyes with pupils like slits.

Vincent felt the spirit's gaze upon him, colder than the night itself. A clammy chill seeped through his bones, choking the warm life out of him and making his fingers tremble. "Are you," he asked, "the Ghost of Days Yet to Come?"

No noise escaped the Phantom, but Vincent knew the answer in his very soul. Looking at its piercing green eyes, he knew why it had chosen some part, some feature of Sephiroth to augment its already fearsome presence. In many ways, the man had represented the ultimate extrapolation of the future – the End, when every star would burn out and every world would die. In the Phantom's gaze, Vincent could see the Planet, dead and lifeless, drifting through the endless, black void of the universe. There were no stars, no celestial bodies or phenomena, to light its way; it was utterly and forever alone.

"You're going to show me the shadows of what hasn't happened yet," Vincent said. "Go ahead. I won't fight you."

The eyes bobbed very slightly, as though the Phantom nodded.

Vincent was not a man easily scared – living for decades with demons as one's only companions had a natural hardening effect upon a body – but this spirit was the most dreadful thing he had ever seen outside his own mind, and an animal fear clawed at the edges of his consciousness. The silence stretched between him and the Phantom until it was unbearable. "Can't you speak?" he asked.

Saying nothing, the Phantom instead reached out with its one hand to point down the road. Vincent swallowed, unwilling to proceed and yet fully aware that he must. He finally rallied himself and said, "Lead on, spirit. Let's get this over with."

The Phantom turned, or rather the eyes within it turned until Vincent could no longer see them and the hand seemed to rotate about the axis of the black mass. It swept off in the direction it pointed, Vincent in tow. Instead of the two of them truly moving, the city moved to them, much as the world had when Vincent had been visited by the first Ghost.

When the world stopped moving around them, Vincent and the Phantom were in the WRO Tower – the great skyscraper which stood near the center of Edge, stretching hundreds of feet into the air. Vincent got his bearings, coming to the conclusion that the Phantom had brought him to a break room on one of the upper floors.

The Phantom itself floated near a small knot of several WRO employees who conversed amongst themselves in cheery tones. Vincent observed the spirit's spectral hand pointed at these people, indicating he should listen to their talk.

"No," a man said, "I don't know many details. Just that he's dead."

"Really?" a second man asked. "When?"

"Last night."

"Was it a disease or something?" a third inquired.

"No idea," the first man said. "I've heard it was something he did to himself, but I haven't got any details."

"Oh."

"In that case, do we know what's going to happen for a funeral?" the second man mused.

"It'll be a quick and cheap one," the first said with certainty. "I mean, who'd pay to have the guy buried? And who'd show up?"

"I'd go if there was food," the third man said. "But there probably won't be, and I didn't really know him that well anyway – just saw him once or twice during the whole Deepground thing."

The Phantom floated away from the employees. It pointed out at the city from the vantage point of a window; Vincent's gaze followed the direction of the outthrust hand. The precise location the spirit indicated, though it was miles away, rushed up to the two of them at great speed only a moment later. Though he had never been here, Vincent certainly recognized the part of the city they were now in. It was the bad part of the eastern north side, which was in and of itself quite rough. The buildings were slipshod and hastily thrown together, with cramped, narrow alleys full of the displaced and the dregs of the city.

It was through one of these alleys that the Phantom floated until it arrived at a tiny, dirty pawn shop. Vincent followed it through the door, which it did not bother to open. Inside, the shop was crammed to bursting, full of detritus and debris, cast-off rubbish and refuse, most of it noisome. Truly, it was a sight that gave credence to the old adage concerning one man's trash and another's treasure.

Behind the shop's counter sat a greasy, fat little man. He busily counted bills in a large wad of cash, though upon closer inspection the wad was mostly comprised of one- and five-denomination slips, bundled together in an attempt to make it look impressive.

In walked three people – two women and a man, all of them carrying large cloth bundles. The fat man behind the counter looked up. With an obvious air of familiarity he said, "Well, well! Can I help you?"

"Yes, Bill, you can," the first woman said. "Let's have some estimations on what these hauls'll bring in, eh?" She set her bundle down on the counter, knocking aside several knickknacks as she did so, and undid the knot holding the cloth together. Out spilled a large pile of laboratory equipment – beakers, test tubes, scales, pipettes, and similar tools.

Bill ran an eye over the pile of stuff, pausing to make a hacking noise in the back of his throat. Without looking at what he was writing, he started to scrawl numbers on the wall next to him with a piece of chalk. He wrote a final figure with an underline. "And don't ask for a gil more or I'll knock it down by ten, y'hear?" The woman looked pleased enough, so he pulled a large amount of bills out of the wad for her. "Next."

The man quickly followed suit. His bundle was full of very similar equipment – equipment that, for some reason, made Vincent feel uneasy at the sight of it, as though he was experiencing a mounting sense of déjà vu but had no words to describe it.

The other woman's bundle turned out to be a large amount of cloth – linen shirts, mostly, but the moment that struck Vincent like a blow was when Bill pulled several very large pieces of what looked like sheets out of the rest of the pile. He asked what it was, and the woman replied, "Oh, it's the guy's bed curtains! I went through his place to get this stuff, and I saw these and figured I might be able to get a few gil for 'em. He doesn't need 'em where he's going." She laughed raucously at this and her two companions joined in, sounding like a pack of insane clowns.

"I see," Vincent said. "This could be me. This could happen to me, couldn't it?"

The Phantom did not answer, but instead the scene abruptly changed. Vincent now stood before a bed. Beneath a stark, white sheet was something that had once been alive, and though it said nothing it spoke volumes. Vincent involuntarily drew in a quick breath, which hitched in his throat as he saw the Phantom pointing its hand at the body's head.

Vincent reached for the sheet, fingers still trembling. Just a touch, a tiny motion, would be enough to remove the sheet, but his hand recoiled. He let it drop to his side. "I can't, spirit. Don't ask me to do this."

The Phantom's hand did not move.

"There has to be somebody who cared," Vincent said. "There has to be! Show me somebody who cared!"

They were still near a bed, but now the bed was in a well-lit, cheerful room. A woman, beautiful and in the prime of life, sat on the bed, cradling an infant in her arms. As Vincent watched, the door to the room opened and a man who had to be about the woman's age entered, looking excited. She looked up at him and said, "What's happened? You look happy."

"Great news!" the man said. "Don't ask me to explain the legal jargon, but we've just come into a large sum of money. It turns out you were the last cousin twice removed or something of this guy in Edge who just died, and he was pretty rich with no heirs and no will. It all defaults to us."

The woman rose, beaming with joy, and held the baby close against her breast as she kissed the man. "No!" Vincent protested to the Phantom. "This isn't what I meant! Show me somebody who's sad, somebody who feels like the world is a worse place!"

The bed was now the one belonging to Cloud and Tifa on the second floor of Seventh Heaven. Tifa was asleep beneath its covers, her eyes closed and her expression peaceful. She stirred when quiet footsteps sounded on the stairs. The door opened just as she opened her eyes to see Cloud step through. "How was your walk?" she asked quietly.

"Fine," Cloud replied, his voice barely above a whisper. "Sorry I woke you up."

"It's fine," she murmured. "You have to get up early to catch the sunrise, after all."

Cloud nodded. "I climbed up that old abandoned radio tower," he said as he shucked his boots and slipped back beneath the blankets of their bed. "After all, I promised Shelke I'd find a new place to watch it from every week."

Tifa wrapped an arm around him. "You're going to run out of new spots eventually, you know."

"I know," he sighed. "But until then, I'll keep watching the sunrise for her. It always was one of her favorite things to do, since there was never any sun in Deepground." He thought for a moment. "Do you think she was happy, at the end? She seemed to be okay, knowing she was going to die."

"I think she was happy with the time she'd had," Tifa said. "I want to say it was mature of her, but she was an adult, after all. She was just trapped in a twelve-year-old's body."

"I just keep thinking it's not fair. She was always close to Vincent. She should have been able to ask him to watch the sunrise for her, not me."

"In the end, Cloud… well, I think it's better she didn't. With what happened to him, that is."

"I know. I wasn't saying it was unfair to me." Cloud narrowed his eyes. "I was saying Vincent was unfair to her."

Vincent heard Cloud's words, and the rational part of his mind screamed _what _happened to him, _how _had he been unfair, but all he could feel was horror at the venom in his old friend's tone. He turned to the Phantom. "Something tells me you're almost done," he said. "So before you go… who was the man on the bed? I know – I think I do – but I have to hear it from you. Tell me."

The Phantom waved its hand. Just as before, it conveyed the two of them to another place, far away. Vincent looked around and found himself in a graveyard. He turned his gaze to the Phantom: it pointed its hand at one particular grave, freshly excavated and not yet even filled.

The chill in Vincent's bones intensified tenfold. "Tell me," he said. "These shadows you're showing me – are they things that _will _be, or things that _might _be?"

Still the Phantom remained wordless, and pointed at the grave, which gaped like a wound in the soil.

"I've never believed in Fate," Vincent said. "I've always thought that people make their own destinies. Is this my destiny? Or is it just one that I might make for myself? Spirit, I have to know!"

It continued to point at the grave. Vincent steeled himself, knowing full well what he would find there. He moved to where he could see the writing on the headstone. There was his own name: **VINCENT VALENTINE.**

"I'm the man who was on that bed," Vincent said. "Wasn't I?"

For the first time since their arrival here, the Phantom shifted. Its pointing finger moved from the grave and aimed itself squarely at him.

"I understand!" Vincent told it, feeling the animal fear clawing at his mind again. "I understand what a blind fool I've been, and arrogant! I'll change, spirit, I'll do whatever it takes – _just tell me I can avert this!"_

The ground gave way beneath his feet. He tumbled into the grave, six feet down. The wood of the coffin within splintered and he fell through it, landing on top of the casket's occupant.

He stared at himself, yet not himself – his flesh was a chalky white, the color of death, and it was drawn so tightly over his bones that he looked desiccated. His hair was the same white color, and had become stringy and coarse; great clumps of it were missing, as though it had fallen out. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his hands had become gnarled and wicked claws. On his right arm, just above the vein, was a large, discolored patch of skin, centered around a prick that might have been caused by a syringe. In his mind, Vincent heard again the WRO employee's rumor that the dead man had done it to himself.

Vincent recoiled from this horrid image, scrabbling at the sides of the grave in a desperate attempt to get out. He looked up at the sky, trying to see if the Phantom was still about, but could discern nothing except endless, grey clouds. There was a rushing sound, and an impossibly massive cascade of dirt rained down into the grave, burying Vincent alive with his terrible doppelganger.

And then he woke up.


	5. Stave Five: The End of It

And so, dear readers, our little tale is concluded. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I also hope all of you have a very good 2009. If you have a moment, leave me a review and tell me what you thought of the story; I always enjoy hearing from you. 'Till the next fic!

* * *

**Stave Five: The End of It**

Vincent woke.

He was bathed in cold sweat, and his heart pounded wildly in his chest, but he was alive. Additionally, he was not buried with his own corpse; this happy fact was a source of endless relief for him.

Sitting up in bed, he inspected the curtains. Much to his delight, they were firmly in place and had not been torn down by a degenerate looking to pawn off a dead man's belongings. Vincent got to his feet, giddy for the first time in years. He was alive, he could prevent the awful future he had seen, and it seemed he was no worse for the wear after the experience.

It was almost… funny.

Before he knew what was happening, Vincent laughed. The sound wormed its way out of him, as though it had been trapped in his gut for a very long time – an assessment that was not too far from the truth – and erupted into the world, loud and joyous. He immediately closed his mouth afterward, embarrassment taking hold of him, but the fact remained: he had laughed, and it had been genuine and unrestrained. He was that happy.

It then occurred to him – he had no idea what day it was. He could easily have been asleep for a week, so well-rested did he feel, or it could have only been a single, supernatural night. The need to know burning within him, he moved to the window and opened it. He had a calendar, of course, but it was downstairs, and he judged this a more alacritous method of discovering the date.

Fortuitously for Vincent, a young man was walking down the street. He was heading into the heart of Edge, bundled up because of the weather but merry nonetheless. Vincent called to him, "Hey!"

The young man looked up at the curious stranger shouting at him from a window. "What?"

"What day is it?" Vincent asked.

A look of pure bemusement crossed the boy's features. "Are you okay, mister? Did you hit your head or something? It's Meteor Day, how can you not know that?"

Meteor Day! Privately, Vincent rejoiced at his good fortune. He had not missed it after all. The Spirits had done their work in the span of only one night, which, Vincent acknowledged, made a certain amount of sense – they were spirits, after all, and there was no telling to which limitations they were subject, if any. "I'm fine," he assured the young man. "I… I've been busy for a while now. Thank you!"

He closed the window, letting the boy go back on his way into Edge, and hurriedly dressed himself. His invitation had been for dinner, of course, but he knew his hosts would not object if he arrived earlier than that.

Vincent departed his building in gloriously high spirits. He walked to the suburbs of Edge, a different man from the one who had pensively made his way to and from the Shin-Ra Building for four years. Those who passed him in the street were not cowed by his presence but rather made merrier, for he courteously wished them a Happy Meteor Day and received the same in turn.

To think only yesterday he would have abhorred saying those words! Yet Vincent now understood the true purpose of Meteor Day, and all holidays like it. They had not been made to overshadow the events of the original day, or to give people false hope for the future. Rather, their purpose was to bring families and loved ones together, so they might celebrate their lives and the good things in them – not in ignorance of the harsh realities of those lives, but in acceptance of them. For without pitfalls and difficulties, how could anyone enjoy happy times or successes?

Of course, Vincent would never articulate his understanding in such a way; he would sooner be shot than ever espouse these things aloud. However, he comprehended all of this, intuitively if nothing else, and was a better man for it.

Such were his thoughts when he opened the doors to Seventh Heaven. Everything was quite like what the Ghost of Days Present had shown him. Tifa and Cloud were behind the bar, Cid and Barret sat at it and argued over drinks, Red XIII, Reeve, and Shelke sat at a table, and Yuffie was in a corner with Marlene and Denzel, telling them a story.

Everyone looked up in open shock at the sight of Vincent. Their surprise only increased when he smiled – not too broadly, of course, just a small curve of his lips – and said, "Happy Meteor Day, everyone."

Cid, his mouth agape, slowly pushed away the drink he had been nursing, obviously suspicious of its contents. Cloud was the first to recover his voice. "Vincent! Glad you decided to come by. We… didn't think we'd be seeing you."

"Well, I've had a bit of a revelation. Don't ask me to explain, because you wouldn't believe me." Vincent gestured at everyone in the bar, the smile on his face growing just a bit. "I know what Meteor Day is about, now. It's not a stupid holiday, or a trick, or anything. It's about all of you."

"Well, we did save the world," Tifa laughed, "but that's a bit selfish…"

"Not what I meant," Vincent said, his tone light. "It's about all of you – not because you're the saviors of the Planet or anything like that, but because you're my family."

Nobody knew quite what to say to that. Silence reigned until Yuffie finally spoke up. "So that would make me the sexy cousin, right?"

The festivities recommenced immediately after that, the tension broken. For the first time in a long time, Vincent felt at home and entirely comfortable among his friends. The quest was still there, of course; he had much to do before he could undo the changes made to his body by Hojo. However, he now saw there was so much more to living. One goal did not have to be the single thing around which his life revolved, and, ironically enough, he owed this knowledge to the very man who had so drastically altered that life decades ago.

There was still one important thing for him to do. At an opportune moment, he drew Shelke aside. "There's something we need to talk about."

She cocked her head at him. "What is it?"

He laid a hand on her shoulder. "Your health is precious, Shelke, and I think you're working too hard. Like you said before, the experiments go at a slow pace. We only have to check up on them once every few days. When you're not in the lab, I want you to take good care of yourself. You have a bright future ahead of you."

Shelke nodded. "I can do that. Thank you, Vincent Valentine."

"You're welcome," Vincent assured her. "And thank _you_ – I owe you more than you know."

And over the years, Vincent was good as his word. He worked, of course, and pursued his goals, but he took time to live and to be with his friends. He kept an eye on Shelke's health and helped her when she required it, and as a result she did _not _die. He treasured the meaning of the holidays in his heart, keeping the teachings of the three Spirits in mind. This is not to say he became a wellspring of optimism and joy. Occasionally he would still brood; he would quite often make dark comments about the fate of humanity; and he always remained taciturn and mysterious. He never ceased being Vincent Valentine, not for an instant – but he became a better Vincent than he had been, and he made sure he did not slip back into his old ways.

Never again did he see any spirits, or at least spirits of the sort that had visited him one fateful Meteor Day Eve, and he was content to leave it that way. His only regret, ironically enough, was that he would never be able to thank Hojo – but, as Shelke observed, "Everyone has regrets, and life is about dealing with them without letting them overwhelm you. Isn't that right, Vincent Valentine?"

He could not have agreed more.

**Fin**


End file.
